SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014\u00a0With military strikes continuing in the Middle East, the work to get many Americans who were stuck in the region out, and home, continues.<\/p>\n
One such story involves a Seminole County couple, who, in a span of days, went from wondering how they would get back to Central Florida to being back in the comfort of their own home.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Seminole County couple Ken and Joy Davis got stuck in Israel after a trip to visit their daughter.
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The two say they had to stay in Israel longer than expected because of Israeli airspace closing after air strikes.
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U.S. Embassy and State Department teams helped the couple get on a commercial flight back stateside.
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Ken and Joy say they were surprised by how Israelis calmly reacted and went about their days during strikes.<\/p>\n
For Joy Davis, painting and working on her craft is how she likes to spend her days, while her husband Ken enjoys time at their pool at their Longwood home.<\/p>\n
This is the norm for this retired couple, but just days prior, in Israel, their daily life looked very different.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only stress we experienced was the very first time we heard a siren, because we didn\u2019t know what to expect, and we didn\u2019t even know what the safe room looked like, and they helped us down there,” Joy Davis said.<\/p>\n
The two were there making one of their regular visits to their daughter to help her move from Northern Israel to Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
But just as their week-long trip was about to end, they learned that all flights out of the country were canceled as Israel closed its airspace due to airstrikes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe probably had maybe 10 times that we had to go into a safe room. And the safe room wasn\u2019t anything we expected,” Ken Davis explained. “It was a room either in a stairwell or room at the bottom of the hotel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ken says they received alerts via their phone and their hotel about 10 minutes before a suspected strike to give them time to bunker down. But what shocked them the most was the calm reactions from everyone around them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was business as usual. They walked around the streets, and when we heard a siren, everybody just went into a safe room in a hotel or a building or wherever they were. But it didn\u2019t seem like we were under attack 24\/7,” Joy said.<\/p>\n
The Davis’s said they never felt in danger but still wanted to get home.<\/p>\n
They worked with the U.S. government for almost a week to figure out when and how they would get back.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe arrangements were made by the State Department or the embassy. They let us know early Sunday morning at around 4 a.m.,” Ken said.<\/p>\n
After a brief delay at the Tel Aviv Airport on Sunday, Ken and Joy said they could breathe a sigh of relief once they got out of Israeli airspace.<\/p>\n
Then, they made their 14-hour journey to Miami International Airport where they took a quick trip home on the Brightline.<\/p>\n
It’s a feat they know would not be possible without U.S. government aid.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could count on the people in the Embassy and the State Department to take care of us,” Ken said.<\/p>\n
Ken and Joy say they usually take two to three trips a year to Israel to visit their daughter, and although the return trip was more complicated this time around, they said it will not stop them from heading back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014\u00a0With military strikes continuing in the Middle East, the work to get many Americans who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[274,14105,115,139,141,140,1014,278],"class_list":["post-188102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-app-top-stories","tag-brandon-spencer","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-seminole-county","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}